The display on the Nexus 4 is another shared component between the Optimus G, and is a 4.7-inch IPS WXGA (1280x768) LCD, which is of course home to an RGB stripe and in-cell touch, or as LG calls it, "zerogap" touch. LG Display unsurprisingly knows how to make LCD displays, and the Nexus 4 display looks subjectively very good. At 320 PPI I can’t see any pixels, and don’t think we need to get into the whole visual acuity discussion again, it’s very good on the Nexus 4. The added width over straight 720p is something I noted was actually very refreshing on the Optimus G when playing with that device in Korea. Most apps scale appropriately and take advantage of it without any issue, and the extra width definitely is noticeable in Chrome, Plume, and all my daily drivers.

The Nexus 4 display goes very bright, at 466 nits, and achieves a contrast ratio of 1352:1 at that maximum brightness setting. This is a huge step over the barely 200 nits that the Galaxy Nexus could eek out.

I’ve mentioned that Google continues to struggle at calibrating their displays. The truth is that everyone except for Apple, HTC, and occasionally Samsung, struggle at calibrating mobile displays. This continues to be the case with the Nexus 4, and the result is that accuracy could be better. I’m convinced the results that we’re getting out of the Nexus 4 basically represent no attempt at calibrating the display, and as a result the numbers suffer.

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188 Comments

Lovely review, Brian, as usual, but I have a question. Forgive me if I just glanced over this, but have you run your benchmarks using the newest OTA which rolled out over the last day or are these running the same software as those posted earlier in the month? In any case, it would be interesting to see if there are any changes in the XML file which seems to specify temperature shelves. Reply

I do whenever possible, always. The issue is what happens when devices crash out before a full run (Optimus G) which then forces my hand to do this piece-by-piece kind of testing and reassemble a whole run.

Because it is closed source thus we dont know exactly what paths it takes (meaning it could disproportionately harm one particular device over another)?Hell, do we need even know what compiler they use? Knowing that and the flags used would certainly be very useful.Reply

We'd get driver reviews, we'd get hardware other than video cards, motherboards, and CPU's reviewed, we'd get the skinny on new custom PC hardware that was coming...

I'm waxing nostalgic here. I miss those days, I think. These smartphone reviews are just beginning to bore me to tears. Maybe I'm just old, but I miss the good ol' days. Back when phones were something we just lived with rather than something people seem to obsess over now.

Back when having the latest and greatest in computing was more about smart hardware selection and less about going to the store, slapping down your cc, and saying, "Gimme your best, barkeep!"Reply

I remember those days really well. Mobile computing is the future of the industry. Furthermore Anandtech still reviews computer cases, HTPCs, and the latest, greatest hardware. I like to think of it as the best of both worlds.Reply

"Mobile computing" will not get truly mobile until we get decent battery life.Meanwhile, AnandTech keeps lauding devices that have more computing power than most of us ever utilize at the expense of battery life (not to mention non-user-changeable batteries, throttling, etc.)Reply